Dear David,
You should first decide on which language you wish to learn.
Mandarin is more popular, since, it is the official language of both China & Taiwan. Also, there are more resources for learning Mandarin
There are almost no resources for learning Cantonese on the net.
You should visit the web-site: ZHONGWEN.COM for their dictionary of characters.
Also, if your computer can read Chinese encoding, you could go to:http://www.mandarintools.com/cedict.html
and down-load the free CEDICT Chinese dictionary. It is a text file of Chinese words with characters, pin yin romanisation and definitions.
Kobo-Daishi, PLLA.

:
: Dear David,
: You should first decide on which language you wish to learn.
: Mandarin is more popular, since, it is the official language of both China & Taiwan. Also, there are more resources for learning Mandarin
: There are almost no resources for learning Cantonese on the net.
: You should visit the web-site: ZHONGWEN.COM for their dictionary of characters.
: Also, if your computer can read Chinese encoding, you could go to:
: http://www.mandarintools.com/cedict.html
: and down-load the free CEDICT Chinese dictionary. It is a text file of Chinese words with characters, pin yin romanisation and definitions.
: Kobo-Daishi, PLLA.

Hello!
I'm am starting to learn mandarin and I'd like to know if there's someone who can help me. We can exchange: you give me your language (it doesn't needs to be mandarin, but...), and I geve you Portuguese, English, Spanish or Japanese.
If you want, pass me an e-mail, do not answer me in this site.
Zai Jian

: Hello!
: I'm am starting to learn mandarin and I'd like to know if there's someone who can help me. We can exchange: you give me your language (it doesn't needs to be mandarin, but...), and I geve you Portuguese, English, Spanish or Japanese.
: If you want, pass me an e-mail, do not answer me in this site.
: Zai Jian

I am starting to learn mandarin and I'd like to know if there's someone who can help me. We can exchange: you give me your language (it doesn't needs to be mandarin, but...), and I geve you Portuguese, English, Spanish or Japanese.

A vocab list is a very smart way to learn Chinese. That is how my mom taught me ever since I was little. A nice resource that is out there to keep track of your progress is the Chinese Character Test (http://www.clavisinica.com/character-test-applet.html). This lets you know how you are doing in learning the characters once you have established a nice vocab list to go through. You can also find flashcards and other interesting tools to help you learn at that site.

Kobo-Daishi wrote:Dear David,
You should first decide on which language you wish to learn.
Mandarin is more popular, since, it is the official language of both China & Taiwan. Also, there are more resources for learning Mandarin
There are almost no resources for learning Cantonese on the net.
You should visit the web-site: ZHONGWEN.COM for their dictionary of characters.
Also, if your computer can read Chinese encoding, you could go to:http://www.mandarintools.com/cedict.html
and down-load the free CEDICT Chinese dictionary. It is a text file of Chinese words with characters, pin yin romanisation and definitions.
Kobo-Daishi, PLLA.

Those familiar with both Mandarin and Cantonese will generally agree that it is more difficult for a native Mandarin speaker to learn Cantonese than it is for a native Cantonese speaker to learn Mandarin. Part of the reason for this observation is that there are many Cantonese who speak Putonghua but very few native Mandarin speakers who learn to speak Cantonese. The same is also true of non-Chinese who speak Cantonese as a second language learning Mandarin as opposed to non-Chinese who have learned Mandarin going on to learn gwongdungwah. However, is this phenomenon due to Mandarin's role as China's official language or are there reasons of learning difficulty that are influencing the ratio? Linguistic analysis seems to support the latter.